A Nightmare with Claws
by M.A. Cunningham
Summary: Our Lone Wanderer, Sam, desires adventure, honor and a story worth bragging at Moriarty's saloon. But as she heads on her adventure, does she ask more than she bargained for? Sam has met her nightmare with claws. Rated T for some possible language, violence and possible romantic-related situations. DISCLAIMER: I do not own any Fallout-Related items mentioned in the story
1. Flashback

_**This my first story related to Fallout and want your feedback. Tell me suggestions, comments, review it and if i should change **_**_anything. Thanks!_**

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As the sun was setting, Sam was beginning to panic. The sun began to set and with it came a cold night. The sun was what gave her warmth as her body felt cold; it let her know where her enemies were and what they could possibly be doing. Now as it was dark, she would have to face a cold night, and won't know if her enemies will discover her or not. To top it off, she lost too much blood. She might fall asleep, and might not wake up. She wishes she never chose to explore the North.

Earlier that day, Sam was at Megaton, asking people if they knew any place worth exploring. Moira Brown, the owner of Craterside Supply in Megaton, told her to that Old Olney was a place worth going to. She said that no one lived there and that there can be technology and weapons worth a lot to any adventurer, if they were able to risk encountering the Enclave on the way over there. Lately, the Enclave have been exploring the Capital Wasteland, searching for something. They don't like ANYBODY, especially Wastelanders, to get near them or any of their things. They are very violent, taking down Raiders, Caravans, Wanderers, and even having turf wars with Talon Company. Moira told her to be on the lookout for them and be careful with the radiation before smiling. Sam, never having seen one, wasn't that scared.

Sam asked Moira for ammo, repaired her weapons and armor, and bought any and all medical supplies and food she thought she'd need for the trip. She went to her house and went to sleep early. In the morning, she grabbed her things, and asked her robotic butler, Wadsworth, for a couple bottles of Purified Water, a rare and expensive drink. She left Megaton and headed North. It took her half a day, and some sneaking to get within the view of Old Olney. Something didn't seem right to Sam. Just seeing that "deserted" town made her feel that there was some reason nobody lived there anymore. She saw a highway near the town and decided to scale it and scope the town for any signs of life. She walked up the ramp of the highway until she came across a gap within the road. Judging by her own height, a mere five-foot two inches, she guessed the gap was at least seven feet long, a distance she knew she couldn't cover by jumping. She took out her Sniper Rifle and used one of the burnt-out cars as support for looking through her scope towards the town.

Her jaw dropped and she nearly dropped her rifle at what she saw. Sam has seen many creatures. From Mirelurk Kings, to Super Mutant Behemoths, to Albino Radscorpions, but never what she saw that moment. A bipedal, humanoid creature roughly 9 to 10 feet tall with 12-inch claws and horns on their heads stood 100 to 150 yards away from her. Sam loaded a shot into the rifle's chamber, took a couple deep breathes and shot at the creature's head. The shot echoed through the air and Sam watched the beast fall. She reloaded and looked at her fresh kill, but it wasn't dead. It got up and glared at her. Even from far away, she could tell it knew she was on the highway. They stared at each other for what seemed like days, before it roared toward her direction and charged.

Sam pointed and shot the beast three more times before it was lost under the highway. She could hear the stomps the creature made as it was heading towards the road up to her. Sam, in a panic, jumped into one of the surrounding ruined cars and hid. The creature made its way to her position and stood there. Sam felt her heart pounding away with fear as she heard it step closer..., closer..., and closer to the car she hidden in. She looked up through the window and stared right into the pale eye of the beast. It roared and tried swiping at her but Sam quickly ducked down into the car to the floor of the car and put her hands over her head, her face eyeing the carpet. She felt a sharp pain on her back and saw blood dripping from where the creature had struck her and screamed in both fear and pain as the creature slashed and swiped its claws at the car, trying to tear it apart to get to Sam…, and then she heard the sound of the creature walking away. Sam cautiously and fearfully raised her head up to the window and saw the creature running head first to the car. Then, a loud crash and the car moved. Slowly but surely, the creature was now pushing the car towards the gap in the highway!

It was ramming the car with its horns towards the hole; towards a drop was a good 150 feet down and she was getting nearer to it. Sam, in a final effort, took out her 10mm Pistol and started unloading bullets at the creature wherever she could. This only made it angry and the creature growled loudly and stepped back. It roared a mighty roar to the heavens and charged the car, and rammed it so hard it slid the rest of the way to the edge and off the road.

The car slid flew into the air; it hit the other edge of the highway and fell for the earth below. Sam let out a loud scream as the car fell and hit the ground with a loud boom. Sam barely stayed conscious for enough time to hear the creature let out a victorious roar. Sam then blacked out.


	2. Limp

Sam remembered it all too well; she remembered the car, the attack, the fall. What she did forget was how she fell through the trap door and into this pit. The only ways out were either through the door in front of her, which she had no way of knowing what can be behind it, or to try scaling the wall, but risk getting caught by the swarm of creatures looking for her. One thing was for sure, she had to find somewhere warm before it got too cold. She tried to remember how she got into this two-way death trap and remembered how.

After the car she was in fell off the highway, Sam blacked out. About an hour or two later, she was woken to heavy footfall, but more in numbers this time. The car was upside down and a good 2 or 3 inches into the ground, making the window openings small, but not blocking her way of seeing feet walking on the ground. It was the creature, but it had friends looking for her too. She saw her sniper inches from her hand, but when she tried to reach for it, the cuts on her back forced a small yelp from her, alerting the beasts nearby of her presence.

She took her rifle, checked any part of her for cuts, blood, or bruises, and found that she was bleeding from a cut on her head, had a twisted ankle, and broke some of her stimpaks. She tried to turn her head to find if any other beasts are behind her, and then threw a broken syringe out the window, and a pretty good distance to distract the creatures. They went toward the sound of the syringe and Sam wriggled her way out the window and made a limping run toward the town.

Unfortunately, the creatures the sound wasn't their number one priority and when they turned and saw Sam running, they went after her. She heard them getting closer to her and took out one of her homemade grenades she called a Nuka-Grenade, pulled the pin and dropped it immediately at her feet and tried to sprint away from the blast zone. She dashed away; scared she would be within the blast radius and die at her own hand. When the grenade exploded, however, she heard the pain-filled roars of the creatures that were unlucky enough to be within range of her soda bomb.

She turned her head to see how many more were coming and saw that there was only one left. She took out her rifle, aimed and shot it in the leg a few times to slow it down. She threw her rifle down to the floor, kept her limped run toward Old Olney, and saw that it was fenced in. She didn't waste time and close the distance between her and the beast behind her, so she climbed over the barricade, albeit awkwardly, and landed in a nightmare. Sam had found out, at that very moment, why nobody lived in Old Olney.

Those nightmarish creatures ruled the whole town. In her line of sight, she counted 10. Who knows how many more could be within the town in total. Sam tried to make as little noise as possible and tried to sneak past one of the beasts. The beast with the crippled leg, however, roared when he reached the gate and all the ones within the town looked towards Sam. They slowly crept towards her, almost savoring the moment at a fresh new kill, so Sam ran and they chased her. She ran anywhere she could.

She took out her pistol and started to shoot towards the monsters, hoping for a single, lucky critical hit. She kept her run and kept on shooting until she was down to her last magazine. She shot 11 bullets out of her gun and continued to run. Looking back on it, she hated that she kept running, especially at the speed she tried to.

She found the road leading out of town and decided to sprint out but after a bit, her ankle finally gave out and she collapsed. She crawled for as much as she could until she noticed that the creatures were probably only 15 yards away from the sewer grate she laid on and realized what she needed to do. Her only way out was her gun, her gun with one final bullet in it. She pointed it to her head and screamed as she pulled the trigger. The gun jammed! Her only way out of her nightmare was gone.

The rage she felt for not being able to end her own suffering infuriated her and she banged her pistol against the grate until it collapsed and she fell. She crawled into the corner and hid as she heard the growls and roars of the creatures above. That brought her predicament that she's in now.

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_**Should I continue on from here or keep going? I thought it would leave the audience with a cliff hanger and have them come up with the assumption of whether Sam lived or not. Then again, I don't want to give you guys a cliff hanger. Suggestions?**_


	3. It's Now or Never

Sam huddled tightly in the corner, holding her legs and curling he self in a ball to keep any warmth she could. What time was it? Her Pip-Boy said it was nearing 7:00 in the afternoon and the sun was quickly setting. The cuts she had, her ankle and facing certain death by either infection, starvation, hypothermia or by the creatures made Sam go into a small sob. She put her cold hands into her hands and felt small cardboard boxes. She had some food in her pockets! She took out a couple boxes of Dandy Boy Apples, Fancy Lads Snack Cakes, a squished box of YumYum Deviled Eggs. She quickly opened the box of deviled eggs and gorged down the crushed eggs. She wanted more but knew she had to ration her food, especially since she had no water.

Every two hours, she would open a box of food and try to slowly savor each bite as if it were her last. For all she knew, and considering what she had in terms of injuries and location, it well might've been her last. The hours in between snacks, she spent trying to fix her pistol. She disassembled her pistol many time and cleaned out parts yet it would always jam when she tried to fire a dry shot.

She didn't care anymore. She would surely die, whether she got her pistol working or not. She tossed it in the opposite corner and started to sob again. Her hunger, sadness, and loss of blood got the better of her as she slowly…slipped into a deep…sleep.

She dreamt of being in Vault 101 with her dad, her best friend Amata, her friend, Jonas, and many others. She dreamt her dad didn't leave the Vault, Jonas was alive, and that everything was paradise. She had no worries of dying, no worries of radiation, and no worries of being hunted by those…things!

_Zap! Zap! Zap!_

Sam opened her eyes as if brought back to life and heard the shots of lasers passing through the open air. They were real close… maybe in the town itself. She heard the heavy footfalls of the creature sprinting past her location, she heard roars, screeches of death from the creatures and voices yelling, "Kill 'em all!"

"Help me! Help I'm over here trapped!" Sam tried yelling as loud as she could but the roars, yells and screeches drowned out her frail, tired voice. Soon, the last she heard was the roar of a creature and nothing else. Her heart sank. Those damned creatures destroyed what could've been her rescue! She was on her own and she knew it. Like when she first started trekking across the wastes, she was alone, scared and at risk of death. She slumped down in defeat and thought of a plan that may or may not leave her dead. Either way, at least she was away from the accursed town.

She leaned the collapsed sewer grate against the wall and used it as a crude ladder, but only to peak at what happened. She saw about eight of the creatures on the ground, dead. What she also saw was about six bodies clad in a sky blue colored armor. She looked to her left and there was another armor-clad body, but split in half at the waist, his right arm outstretched and reaching for a laser rifle… laser rifle! If this one had one, the other six should have more ammo for it! She looked around for any surviving creatures, and upon seeing none, she climbed higher up the grate and dragged herself out of her pit. She slowly crawled over to the severed body only 10 feet away from her and picked up his rifle. She checked its magazine and saw a microfusion cell, with about half of it expended. She searched the man's body for more ammo and found some in his hand who gripped it tightly. She forcefully pried each finger off the two power cells and put the new one in the rifle. She rolled the corpse on its back and heard a faint rattle. Around the man's neck was a holotag.

_Paladin Harry Williams_

_Born August 23, 2249_

Sam ripped the tag off the man's neck and stuffed it in her pocket. She crawled over to the other bodies and did the same to them, yet avoiding the corpses of her past hunters. When she looted the last of the mauled and severed bodies, she heard something clang behind her. She slowly turned her head back to see one of the creatures biting into the bottom half of an armor-clad body, most likely Paladin Williams' legs. She slowly raised the laser rifle, aimed the barrel towards the creature, and squeezed the trigger in five rapid successions. Each beam hit a different part of the creatures face and the beast fell with its head practically Swiss cheese. She quickly got up, tried to hop her way to the bottom-half of Williams' body on her good leg, and searched it. Of all the things, she found two Stimpacks, a roll of bandages and 2 syringes of Med-X.

Swiftly, she injected her veins with a dose of a stimpak, wrapped most of her injuries in the bandages, and finally gave herself a dose of Med-X to make the journey home. She sat on the floor surrounded by dead bodies for a full hour, checking her newly acquired weapons, refilling ammo, and replacing her torn and bloodied leather armor with one of the soldiers under armor of their hard-shell sky blue armor. After the hour, she felt better and was a bit relaxed. She got up and was able to walk with only a tiny limp.

She got onto the road leading out of old Olney and followed it out of town. When she left, it was 3:00 in the early morning and she wasn't tired at all anymore. For hours, she traversed the Capital Wasteland trying to get back home. The trip was met with a..., eerie peacefulness… Every once in a while, she would turn her head back to see if anything was behind her and she would just see the barren land, with possible dust swirls. She passed the Grisly Diner where she emptied it of the low-life raiders, passed Scrapyard and eventually heard a growl behind her that stopped her in her tracks. She slowly turned around and saw the very same creature whose leg she crippled the day before. It looked at her and it lunged at her. She raised her rifle and shot several unlucky shots before taking off. She kept running, never looking back until she reached the river.

When she arrived at the bank of the river, she ran and dived into the water. Right as she leapt, however, the creature swiped its large claws and cut her ankle. She swam to the shore on the other side and shot at her assailant. It only got it mad and she saw the creature wade into the water and swim towards her.

"Oh God!"

She ran and ran and ran. As she was running, she took out her last Med-X, applied the syringe's contents into her leg, and kept running straight. She made it to Vault 101 and ran straight to Megaton, hoping Lucas Simms, Jericho, and Stockholm could kill the creature together. When she reached the town, Stockholm was asleep in his sniper's nest above the city.

"Stockholm! Wake up!" She yelled it three times before the sniper woke up. He saw the creature slowly gaining on Sam and started to shoot at it. "Call Lucas Simms and Jericho! Have them come out and shoot at-" Sam didn't finish the sentence as the creature thrust its foot-and-a-half clawed hand through the abdomen of Sam from behind. She held onto the claw as the creature threw her to the side and was barraged by a town of people wielding a variety of weapons. Sam stayed conscious long enough to see the final inhabitant of Old Olney as it became gunned down. Sam smiled as she lay on the dirt, seeing Lucas Simms rush to her aid. _If I'm dying,_ she thought, _then I'm glad It was brought down with me. _Sam blacked out as the thought of death crossed her mind.


End file.
